When I think about the fact that I have spent 23/28ths of my life in school, I have difficulty controlling my gag reflex. However, the (exceedingly) rare swells of intellectual superiority I experience when watching really (really) dumb movies make those 23 years worth it.
My Virology professor in undergrad actually made us watch Outbreak over three sessions and discuss just how horrifically wrong every sentence in that movie is. I don’t think many people pick up on the stupid science things Hollywood lets slip, nor do I think those slips make any major difference in educating (or misleading) the general public. That said, I bet there are people in the world that still can’t understand why those silly scientists don’t just find that original AIDS monkey, make a vaccine from it, and save the whole world in under two hours.
The following are a few of my very favorite dumb movie science moments, very loosely paraphrased, along with my reaction to them (in italics). Please note than I am not prepared to comment on why I was watching movies this bad in the first place.
Star Trek: The Next Generation (no one laugh. Star Trek is sacred), Doctor Beverly Crusher to Captain Jean Luc-Picard:
“Captain! His intracellular protein levels are dangerously high!”
Umm, why? Did he have a steak for lunch?
Red Planet, Tom Sizemore as “the scientist”:
“I only believe in facts, in science, in the four DNA bases… A, G, T, P.”
P? Seriously? What science consultant with seventh grade biology under his/her belt got paid a gazillion dollars to come up with P?? I could so do that job.
Mission to Mars, in response to an image of a spinning DNA helix:
“Why, that looks like human DNA!”
If someone were actually able to run massive sequence alignments in their head simply by looking at a helix on a screen… I got nothing. I don’t even know how to react to that. It’s wrong on so many levels.
Does anyone have any other good ones? Or bad ones, as the case may be?
“The Relic:” she puts a biological sample into a machine and a few minutes later, the entire genome is synthesized, and the computer reads “x%” human. I had no idea what the “perecentage human” actually meant.
One of the Mission Impossible movies (probably the second one): Tom Cruise’s character put a sample into a high tech microscope, peers into it, and sees bands, much like you’d see on a gel.
I so agree with the last one on your list! (Mission to Mars isn’t it?). I was enjoying the movie, kind of, until then (esp. when Tim Robbins takes off his helmet in a vacuum LOL), but then the dodgy biology…well. Game over. It was so silly and easy to fix too :(
That’s what it was! Mission to Mars. Thank you. I didn’t really think it was Lost in Space. They all blend into one.
I couldn’t make myself watch the Mission Impossible about the biological virus agent thingie. I knew I would be too annoyed. That, and Tom Cruise is creepy. x% human? What could that possibly mean? Did they cross a person with an African violet or something?
i’m not much of a movie person (the last one i watched was Outbreak during a tutorial class in school… the norm of lecturers??) but can’t stop laughing at the movie science excerpts!! they can con the general public but not anyone with a background in science… amen.
I never had the patience to watch either “The sacred” starTrek or mission to mars. But i still find movies like “Awakenings” and “Lorenzo’s oil” to be brilliant.
I think that there is more to this line of argument than is at first apparent. The important thing in a film (or a book) is not the gadgetry, but the stories and the characterization. Sure, it’s important to get the science right if science is mentioned, but it’s probably best to have no science at all if it threatens to hold up the story and interrupt the necessary suspension of disbelief. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis (for example) were critical of H. G. Wells who envisaged travel to the Moon (in The First Men In The Moon) driven by a mineral that generated anti-gravity. Their argument is summarized in Tolkien’s unfinished story The Notion Club Papers, a thinly disguised portrait of Lewis, Tolkien and the ‘Inklings’, their literary circle. In this story, Tolkien has one of his characters comment on Wells’ conceit by saying that you cannot fool nature that way, because gravity is a fundamental statement of where you are in the Universe—it is more honest to wave a wand or fly on a magic carpet, an attitude which shows that Tolkien must have been familiar with general relativity as well as knowing that the story is the thing, not the variously picturesque laboratory impedimenta you meet on the way.
Vivien – It’s so funny that you watched Outbreak as well! I guess it was bad enough to have caught the eye of many a lecturer. Feel like someone should write the Outbreak people and thank them for teaching us what not to do!
Smitha – I never had the chance to see Lorenzo’s Oil. There is rather little to contend with in Awakenings, as far as I can remember. Good movie, for a tear jerker!
Henry – Your point is well taken. No, I don’t believe that commenting on the “human” percentage of a piece of DNA can mess up an entire movie. Not for the general public, that is. It did for me. I was laughing when I was clearly not supposed to be. That’s all I wanted to say. As to the suspension of disbelief – removing one’s helmet in outer space to say something only partially clever (a la Mission to Mars) successfully resuspended all my disbelief.
or would that be de-suspended? Grounded my disbelief? Something to that effect.
At the risk of inspiring a pile-up, I loved Outbreak. For me, the most interesting thing about science is not facts, but scientists and their culture – so I am willing to overlook some bad science if it means seeing my ‘world’ on the screen in a rip-roaring good storyline. I’m a virologist by training, so a gun-toting virologist hero is irresistible! Plus, it’s Dustin…
As far as movies are concerned, Outbreak was good! I am willing to forgive it the week’s worth of nightmares I had from watching oozing and decaying people for 2 hours (I am not the hardy type of virologist – I tote no gun… mainly just HSV-1). I definitely appreciated that scientists were the heroes – not the police, not the marines, but the scientists. Revenge of the nerds!
For one thing, Outbreak featured a fuel-air bomb and a helicopter with miniguns, plus the monkey from Friends. So it’s alright in my book!
Err, ok, anything where a psychologist / psychiatrist can read another person’s mind from their body language, the scence of a crime, or pure intuition.
Spy movies where lies are detected using a portable, silent fMRI machine.
Truth drugs.
The 80% success rate on people being defib’d.
People with neurological diseases having perfect speech.
Anything with amnesia.
Accelerated development of clones.
“Flesh wounds”.
Auto-locking car doors.
Revolvers that hold 25 rounds.
That poison that makes it look like you’re dead for a few hours, but then you miraculously reawaken (that includes you Shakespeare!)
Stealth helicopters.
People that can outrun explosions.
Lasers making noise in space. (there’s at least three things wrong with that sentence)
AI
Man, you just obliterated every movie that has come out in the last decade. And Sherlock Holmes, by the way (re: point #1). Cool.
I recently read ‘Never Let Me Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro, and was really impressed by the fact that he made no attempt to explain the science, but launched into the story as if we lived in a world where it was common practice.
I absolutely agree with you Henry, but do love stories where the magic carpets are given sciency names like ‘hyperspace drive’.
Of course yes ‘awakenings’ is a tearjerker.
But, the miraculous effect of the drug L-Dopa is well potrayed in it and it serves as a demo to basic researchers in Parkinson’s disease on how the normal functioning is restored to a great extend by levodopa. A patient who had previously been frozen in a chair gets up and walks. It’s hard to imagine, it is true, that kind of thing actually occurs.
Anna: maybe we should forward all our inputs here to the Outbreak people – the comments speak a thousand words ;)
in all ways, Outbreak IS good!!
Actually, I remember quite enjoying Outbreak! But yes, it’s the suspension-of-disbelief thing. Whatever jolts you out of the story is a Bad Thing, but that’s irrespective of whether that Thing is respectably scientific or just phooey.
My pet hate was in Independence Day when the entire plot turns round being able to infect an alien speceship with a computer virus. It was almost as bad as watching Vivica Fox trawl her way from one end of post-apocalypse LA to the other without damaging her manicure. Okay, so it’s bubblegum, and I shouldn’t have minded. But I did.
A pal of mine is marine biologist Adam Summers who woke up one day to find himself the science adviser to Pixar’s Finding Nemo (read his story here.) The movie-makers were very keen to make the film as realistic as possible—up to a point. Whenever they felt that Adam was getting too pedantic they’d remind him that in the real world, fish don’t actually talk.
The Awakenings story was pretty good. In fact I’ve got a CD-Rom that’s a Parkinson’s encyclopedia and it contains the original 1960’s video footage of those patients before and after levodopa. Before = waxwork dummies moving in what appears to be slow motion. After = normal.
Only thing to bear in mind (for you precise people) was that Awakenings was about post-encaphalitic lethargica rather than Parkinson’s. But Robert DeNiro really kicked ass portraying the dyskinesias, and it’s also got the woman who does Marge Simpson’s voice in it.
I wrote a feature article for the now defunct BioMedNet on science in the movies, it’s a little old now, but was fun to do, and I got to talk with some of the people who work on the scientific “accuracy” in movies. You can read the science in the movies article here.
It’s only a movie!
Originally attributed to Hitchcock, it seems relevant to say it here. Films are about suspensions of disbelief, about being transported to other worlds where fish talk, hyperdrives work, the dog doesn’t die, and lone scientists that no one will listen too are right.
I’m with Jennifer – I love it when the people are depicted ‘accurately’ as real, three dimensional people. Sunshine’s great for Chris Evans as a handsome engineer, The Relic’s fab for Penelope Ann Miller’s biologist strugging for grant income, and so on…
We could be having the same conversation about films being ruined by bad typography I’ve sat next to a woman who complained to me about the historical inaccuracies in the tartan weaves of some of the historical Scottish stuff of the late 1990s (Rob Roy etc). Everyone could nitpick a film to death. Let’s get on and enjoy it for what it is – a story with characters.
In response to the “Mission to Mars” comment, recall that they also refered to the DNA bases as chromosomes.
(In response to the spinning double helix)
“But that DNA looks human.”
“No way. It’s missing the last pair of chromosomes. See?”
Pointing this kind of stuff out always makes me giggle. Haha…do you remember “The Secret World of Alex Mack”?
Wow, Joshiawa. I tip my hat to superior memory. That movie is even dumber than I remember.
I don’t know what Alex Mack is. TV show?